Actor Arjun Rampal talks about the darkest phase of his life, saying it came when his marriage with model Mehr Jessia was falling apart and his mother was battling cancer. In the same conversation, she said that her partner, fashion designer Gabriella Demetriades, came into her life at a time when she felt she was losing people close to her, and became a strong anchor as she tried to deal with grief, change, and emotional turmoil.

Talking to Sohini on YouTube show The Crown was canceledRampal witnessed a period marked by loneliness and loss. The 53-year-old actor said that he had lost his father three years ago, he was becoming distant from friends and felt that everything he had built through hard work was being lost. He also talked about the introspection that followed and how he tried to understand his mistakes instead of blaming others.

stalwart The actor said that he had felt the loneliest when he was not as connected to himself as he is today. Reflecting on the end of his marriage, Rampal said it was sad, but added that love is not static and neither are people. According to him, people keep changing and sometimes two people are not able to grow or change well together.

Rampal said that that period might have been the most difficult period of his life. He said, “I think that was probably the darkest phase of my life because that was right when my mother got cancer and I was losing her. I was losing everyone who was close to me. I had lost my father three years before that. I was losing friends. I was losing everything I had worked so hard to get.”

Support from Gabriella Demetriades

The actor then talked about Demetriades and the support he received in that relationship. He said he was lucky to have someone like Gabriella in his life, describing her as a very strong anchor even when coming from a dark place.

He said, “So we were both in the storm and like I said, we had to face it. But it’s good, we had to face it together and then the blessing came.”

The actor also said that guilt only makes the person more unhappy, as it becomes a prop to avoid honest introspection and turns the person into a victim. When a person loses everything, he said, what remains is pure introspection and the need to go within oneself and understand what one has become, why things happened, and what one’s faults are.

Rampal and model-designer Gabriella Demetriades met through mutual friends in 2018 and later started dating. They welcomed their first son, Arik, in 2019 and Ariv in 2023.

Rampal separated from his wife, producer and model Mehr Jesia in 2018.

On the work front, she recently starred in Aditya Dhar’s stalwart And Dhurandhar: Revenge. He played the role of Major Iqbal in the film, which also starred Ranveer Singh, R Madhavan, Sara Arjun, Rakesh Bedi.